Month: October 2013

Alright, I’ll get it out. Expectorate it, if you will! It is bloody unfair that I don’t get to cross the seas, OK? Well I won’t say there’s nary a stamp on my passport. An island which you can hang-glide your way to and taxi down to the beach deck almost like you’re tap dancing to celebrate your holiday. My solitary trip away from homeland!

My Facebook pictures will be all about me and those with me, which should fuel instant disinterest in those compulsive photophiles so used to the manicure of the West. That’s because the sexiest background in my pictures will probably be one of those unutterable exotic flowers in bloom at the Lal Bagh flower show, which I’d have gotten in front of, barely managing to avoid a potbellied oil faced ‘gentle’man calling after his incorrigible brats.

But of course, why not, I ask? The said impatient photo junkies have had their friends doing the coolest things; some of them peering down from the Skydeck at Chicago, some trying to restore the Leaning tower of Pisa to its rectitude, a few historically inclined trying to match up the Thinking Man’s poise right next to his stony presence, and a few quite content flashing their benign smile at some obscure parking lot of a super market.

All these jaunts are but a satisfaction of the sheer wanderlust in these globetrotters. And mind you, they have worked their way to get to these places. A big bunch of them burn the midnight cigarette pack while coding away to weekend dreams, while many others fly all the way to pick up tool skills and have the big bosses give the trainers cotton candy pink slips as parting gifts. The more fortunate of them attend big meetings where they can sink into oblivion, only to resurface for photo ops, while still others go around the world in 80 years of wedded bliss. There’s also a prudent lot who slog their butts off for months at a stretch inside hallowed portals of study, to save for that occasional trip to the nearby mountains.

What to do, I haven’t done any of these things! An outfit I joined had clients spread across the Western hemisphere, but video conferencing was a revelation then. Then, I thought when I could afford to be insane enough, I’d escape the local drudgery and do a fancy course out there among the Caucasians, but I didn’t know what I should burn my cash on, and my scores anyway came to my rescue. Those short junkets you ask? Man, I have barely started getting away from my desk, and managed to move a few kilometres West on my sputtering two wheeler!

Pompey the Younger, who fought Caesar long enough to give the latter some serious headache, once said to his sailors, ‘to sail is necessary, to live is not’. Well, that’s pretty much sic, but you get the import. No sir, I’m not whining one bit. I’m just marvelling at nature. It’s incredible how I’m moored to the docks. Even the cruiser that was supposed to take me to Lakshadweep (which is India, mind you) decided to do a U-turn one winter afternoon, for no apparent reason. I figured out that the captain watched Titanic for the first time that morning.

So, what’s with the travel bug? Nothing really, Just that I want to feel what it is to be a Roman in Rome. Well, to be sure, if you sent me to Scotland, you won’t catch me dead wearing those chequered kilts! Those skirts you would dread fluttering. But how about drinking Scotch like a Scot? We can do that back home as well, can’t we? OK, drinking Scotch with a Scot in Scotland? That I presume will take more than a photo update on Facebook, the cheap thrill it provides notwithstanding!

I’m anyway going to be docked here for a long time to come. The least you can do to keep my spirits up (other than getting me that single malt Glenn when you’re back) is to capture yourself doing some really fun things. Kindly avoid holding the Pyramids between your thumb and index finger, and may I also request you to refrain from showing off your dripping yellow jackets at Niagara, where you are as good as your neighbour?